Today on “Post Reports,” we take you to a conservative-leaning steel town in Illinois grappling with its new role as home to the closest abortion clinics for many patients in the South and Midwest post-Roe.

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Granite City is a conservative-leaning community in Southern Illinois that’s seen layoffs at the local steel mill and had dozens of businesses close in recent years. But the city is now becoming known for something else: abortion. It’s home to the closest abortion clinics for many out-of-state patients across the South and Midwest who can no longer access the procedure where they live because of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. v Wade. 

Granite City’s geography – it sits at the bottom of a blue state, surrounded by a sea of red states with abortion bans – means as many as 14,000 people are expected to come here for an abortion in the next year.

That influx of abortion patients could infuse much-needed cash into the city. But some in Granite City are not comfortable hitching their economic fortunes to abortion.

Abortion reporter Caroline Kitchener and audio producer Ariel Plotnick went to Granite City just days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. They talked to people in the community about what this post-Roe era could mean for their city.